Teens and Tech

Teens today do not want technology. I live with three of these teens. Trust me.

What they want is what technology promises them. They didn’t leave Facebook because their parents joined (we didn’t). They left because Facebook brought drama to their lives and there was already enough drama in their lives. It had promised a connection with friends and when the connection turned toxic, they abandoned the platform.

Teens long for communion with God, but not necessarily with a community of faith. Their communities are at school, in clubs, and in sports. Why? Because those communities fill a need they can express. It requires of them what they are willing to give and because their parents understand those communities, moms and dads are willing to participate, drive to and from, and pay healthily for said communities.

Can your parish do that?

Today, teens use social media for the potential to foster presence, even in the absence of deep relationships. The reality is young people will always make technology social. That is their nature. That is their desire – connectivity to others. We ask, “Where are all the young people?” when we gather on Sundays, but what we should be asking is, “How do we welcome young people and how do we connect with them? How do we inspire? What can our community do to feed their need for belonging?”

Maybe it begins by listening.

We are becoming a face-less society and we have to find a way to shift from transactional to transformational relationships. Instead of “do this and get that,” we have to listen to the needs of teens and be willing to meet those needs, even if it means changing how we engage with them.

Because young people who are experiencing an absence of presence will naturally attempt presence in absence. Read that again. It has happened before.

Don’t believe me? Look at the cover of Time Magazine on February 23, 1959. The image of “The Telephone Man” and the cover story that accompanied it, told of the reality of the power of this medium and how it was replacing face-to-face conversation. Just a few decades old, the telephone had transformed how businesses functioned, how families stayed connected, and how this simple invention ushered in a new experience of daily life – turning what was once a luxury for the rich into an essential tool of the everyman. Like the printing press in the 16th century, the telephone redefined society.

So has social media.

Belonging and identity are never negotiated alone. Neither is intimacy. And believing has never led to belonging.

We belong first. We always have. That’s why the encounter is so important. Blockbuster didn’t die out because people stopped watching movies. It died because people found a new way to encounter the movies.

Technology is social, young people will make sure of that. It overcomes the imposed separation of place and time.

We must make sure it doesn’t overcome our communities and that we do not leave the young people out in the cold to fend for themselves.

This week, listen to the young people. Learn how they make connections and what they seek at their deepest levels.

Then, let’s work together to meet those needs.

pjd